EXPERT GROWING TIPS

You can plant bulbs deeper than you think – up to 15cm is fine, especially on light soils. Snowdrops do not appreciate fresh manure.

Divide snowdrops (above) as early as possible in the year or after the leaves die back – the worst time to move them is late Feb/ early March. a new snowdrop festival (sheptonsnow dropfestival.org.uk). Energetic and public-spirited, Allen was the first person to deliberately save and germinate snowdrop seed and he wrote a significant paper for the 1891 snowdrop conference. Sadly, most of his cultivars were lost to disease but three, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Magnet’ and ‘Merlin’, survive.

“Galanthophilia is at an extraordinary level in the UK and it was mad that the town wasn’t getting the benefit of it,” say Dominic Weston, one of the festival organisers. “When we moved here, we read about James Allen, ‘The Snowdrop King’, but there was very little local knowledge. We thought it was staggering; remarkable work done by a remarkable man, yet not celebrated.”

The garden at the Allen family home is now under a car park, while the handsome stone obelisk at his grave has been deemed unsafe and removed. But the tide is now turning. In 2013 a new Snowdrop Project set out to give Shepton Mallet something to be proud of, starting by planting 300,000 bulbs around the town. The first Snowdrop Festival in 2017 saw shops sponsoring planters along the high street, window displays and an events programme including poetry and art competitions. “It is a determined whitewashing campaign – in a good way,” says Weston.

“The aim of the festival is to give people back their own story; bring to life the legend that is James Allen,” he says. “The great thing is that now everybody wants to grow them – they are doing it themselves. There is increased awareness, particularly in primary schools. We want it to be a long-term project and if you can get the young ones back on board, that is the future.”

Honouring the legacy of the old-time galanthophiles, they are busy making a new tradition, focused on the flower, a move that inspires not just the local community, but attracts interest and competition entries from as far away as Canada, Africa and Australia. For Weston, this is proof of the snowdrop’s enduring qualities.

“It resonates with people even if they don’t grow snowdrops,” he says, “We get a lot of poetry about people who have been lost, or, because snowdrops contain a compound used in medicine to fight dementia, who are becoming lost. It is slightly melancholic, but it is a welcome melancholy that speaks of hope in desolate times.” Kilpatrick agrees. “It is something to hold on to. When all else is dying, snowdrops are starting to live”.

But what would prolific, nonconformist, modest James Allen have made of all this? Weston laughs. “He loved people to be into his plants and he was very civic-minded. I think that he would find it strange to celebrate him as a person, but he would be proud of the community engagement.”